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Monday, 20 July 2015

Leadership: difficulties and challenges

Managers from National Health Service consortiums now seem an endangered species, according to the King's Fund. Politicians have demanded cuts and they have fought greatly so that their centres can maintain the required levels of care. The result: the leakage of first level managers disappearing from the public system.

The first reference documents, which has as its subtitle "No More Heroes" (the green one), describes the new leadership style beyond the mandatory compliance to the objectives imposed from above. It said that Managers who have an inside perspective are essential if we want to get the doctors, nurses and other health professionals to do their work with quality. The new leadership should not only correspond to the manager, the heroism no longer makes sense. Therefore, now we need to have leaders throughout the organization, leaders who are present in every corner of all processes and, above all, know how to involve professionals in the management of resources, but also know how to facilitate the participation of patients in the decisions that affect them.Good management improves outcomes

According to the document, ‘Employee engagement and NHS performance’ by Michael West and Jeremy Dawson also published by King's Fund (cited in the red document), "Health organizations with committed professionals improve patient experience, reduce errors, lower infection, lower mortality, better manage budgets, benefit from more client loyalty and reduce staff absenteeism. "

In the chart below, sourced from West and Dawson document you can see the correlation between the involvement of professionals in the quality of services and the quality of financial management:

The origins of alienation

If you have 8 minutes, don’t miss the video of Chris Ham, Director of King's Fund, and Paul Zollinger-Read and Robert Naylor on the origin of professional alienation:

Video SummaryFrom the 90’s, managers became local representatives of the government: results management, transparency (bureaucratic), waiting lists, accreditation, quality, etc. And, as a result, disengagement appeared among physicians. They felt part of a machine and they didn’t like it. Those managers went in and out of the offices without understanding very well what the local keys were to make things work right or wrong. They didn’t listen. New managers followed but they also refused to listen. At least that's what they say in the video.